RelativelyStrangers

Tomorrow I might just pop a few words down for my blog or I might not. I have to visit the medics for a little something at an unearthly hour and that will mean probable hours spent in rush hour traffic in both directions.

There’s nothing much wrong with me, I think and hope, but you can’t help but think of the dance eternal when you get within a few miles proximity of a hospital.

My mood was not enhanced with a phone call I received a day or two back. I come from a big, noisy and very lively continental type family. A cousin rang me to tell me that my late mother’s first cousin had died. The lady, who I hardly knew, was in her mid 90’s, but in our tradition, when you get the phone call in the morning, about such a relation being buried that afternoon, you attend!

I have to say that the eerie quotient was magnified by the fact that at the precise moment I received the phone call about the funeral, I was doing my final draft of a radio play I’m writing, set partly in a funeral.

I attended the funeral and found myself surrounded by a great many people I didn’t know, and just a few who are related but are, shall we say, relatively strangers.

It was years since I had seen this, now somewhat distant part of our family. There was a time when we were less sophisticated and much poorer when we got together in huge regular gatherings of the entire clan. That was when my grandmother and her several sisters and a brother were still all with us, and ruled the clan with charm, a smile and a will of iron. Now we barely recognize each other. My more distant cousins have clearly prospered, and keep company with similarly well-healed friends. There were more Bentleys in the car park than are found at a premier league football club’s training ground.

My closest male cousin, Ivor, stood next to me in the prayer hall; we tend to do this at these family events. As ever we find ourselves making jokes to relieve the seriousness of the moment. We’ve been doing the same thing since we were small boys; I suppose it gives us comfort, these little moments of humor. We might be getting a little older, but when we’re together we’re still those small boys who played together at our mutual grandmother’s home.

Ivor is starting a formal genealogy of our family and has a computer programme to assist with the task. When we discussed how difficult it was just to work out our connection to all the people attending the funeral we realized how hard it would be to chart our family. But it will be great to see the result. You understand your present, and can shape your future if you know your past.

The funeral itself was, as ever, a sad and emotional outpouring of shared grief. I looked at the immediate family of the deceased, and when their veneer of smart sophistication crumpled under the strain of the moment they suddenly looked very much like my late grandmother.

I do feel a bit guilty, but as soon as it was over I returned home to make some revisions to my radio script. I can’t help it, I’m a writer, and I’m confident that my family would understand.